Indonesia's Furtive Snake Trade

Jessica Lyons Green tree pythons captured in the Indonesian rain forest. Rhinos may be poached for their precious horns and tigers for their skin and bones, but with reptiles it’s often about the allure of possessing live exotic animals. Illegal trading of reptiles and amphibians in Southeast Asia is aimed mainly at stocking the international pet trade. Despite legislation in the region banning the practice, many of those animals wind up overseas in European terrariums or listed in online classifieds in the United States. “Consumers play a huge role in this trade,” said Jessica Lyons , a master’s candidate in conservation biology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who described the phenomenon in an article in the latest issue of the journal Conservation Biology. Ms. Lyons set out to document the toll this demand is taking on reptiles and amphibians in Indonesia...